2nd reefwalk of 2008. Love this shot. One of our hunter-seekers (Marie?) checking out the intertidal.
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YJ showing a family the ever-popular common seastars. You look like a pro girl.
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Howard with his group of wide-eyed reefwalkers.
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XL doing her stuff.
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Hmm.. wonder what Abby’s showing with her fingers… perhaps she was showing how your booties can go through the venomous dorsal spines of a certain very grumpy looking fish. a fish that looks like this…?

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It’s MS’s fave bud.. Mr Stonefish.. again!

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“The venom hurts so much that some people who’ve been stung have wanted the limb amputated. It can cause shock, paralysis, tissue death, and even fatalities if not treated within a few hours. The stonefish has at least one beneficial use. It’s a very expensive sashimi called okoze in Japan.” - Environmental Graffiti

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Then I have to mention this waaay cute baby butterflyfish spotted by one of the TPJC students. It was about as big as a 10 cent coin! sharp-eyes! Good chance to mention the false eye-spot at the tail end and how its true eye is always within a coloured stripe. Also how butterflies are good reef health indicators as they are coral polyp eaters.

“For those species of butterflyfish which are obligate corallivores, a decline in the health of a reef, manifested by decreasing food quality of the stressed coral polyps, will result in a decrease in the abundance and diversity of these species and an increase in territory size, feeding rate and agonistic encounters as mated pairs attempt to maintain their nutritional intake by expanding their territories to include more coral colonies” - coral reef indicators website

Thanks to MS for the photos.

Till the next reefwalk. Cheers.

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 13th, 2008 at 12:29 am and is filed under Reef Walk. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.